Introduction
The intention of this article is to comment on the works of Hannah Arendt, in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. The trial was made as a demonstration of the existence of a Judean “State”, and that it would exercise its sovereignty in defense of its nationals, even if that meant trespassing the international cogent laws.
The Israel State was constituted by a external decision, which affected deeply the dynamic of the forces in the region instantly and with repercussion still. The occupation of the space where the Israel by the Judean nation was a long and lengthy process, with varying intensity according to the fluxes of power and its practical demonstrations, the diverse wars that happened, the peace treaties and the bipolar dynamic.
The necessity of the identification process of the Jews with its State, a nationalism supported by the plans of a “Great Israel”, had to be built and it had to be fast. The trial of Eichmann was one of the several processes that were utilized to create the notion that Israel was a “State of the Jews” and that the notion of its own people should be equal to the notion of Jew nation.
Ben-Gurion trespassed several international laws as well as nationals, to “arrange” a trial were the verdict was already known, as well as the punishment, this was done with the international press publishing articles doubting of the impartiality of the court that was established there.
The “arrangement” of the trial was made in the most schematic and methodic way, it wasn’t possible to let doubts appear as what was going to be the sentence, the endless judicial procedures that were trespassed and created, the States were Eichmann committed his crimes did not intervene efficiently for him. The allegations from the accusation have not had any consideration, in general, neither with the status of the defendant nor the crimes committed by him.
We can say the trial started when Eichmann was abducted from his house in Argentina by forces from MOSSAD. With a beginning such as disturbing as this we can start to doubt the impartiality of the court that Israel tried to establish. The question remains as why would Ben-Gurion authorize the abduction of Nazi criminal, a middle bureaucrat that was simply ignored by the Nuremberg trials and that by the criminal code this case should be dismissed as due to the rule of prescription. Hannah Arendt provides us with an answer throughout the book.
The Making of the Process
The infraction that felled in the Argentina sovereignty gives us the preview of what would be the trial of Eichmann. Its kidnapping was planned and executed by MOSSAD under the orders of the prime minister of Israel, Ben-Gurion unleashed the process of infractions and wrong doing that would lead the law to the execution of the defendant.
The making of the criminal process for the initial procedures violated several norms from the National as well the International Public law. Let’s start with the crimes which Eichmann was trialed.
Eichmann was charged with crimes against humanity, against the jew people and war crimes, during the period of the Nazi regime, among others. The accusation established their allegations based on the new definition of crimes against humanity, based in an analogy of the criminal law of the international cogent law of piracy crimes, and was based in the laws for Nazi and their collaborators from 1950, in which every accusation can be charged with the capital offense.
The accusation was using a new crime, the crimes against humanity, which never existed before the World War II. The industrial extermination of the Jew nation served as the factual milestone for the new norms that were created to prevent and to punish those crimes, the London Agreement of 1945, the works derived from the trials of Nuremberg, the law for Nazi and their collaborators from 1950, also the works from international organizations, as well as the manifestation of the international community in favor of legislation against genocide and the what would be known as the crimes against humanity.
Starting with those works and scenario a series of laws were being constructed to punish and prevent crimes against humanity, hence the allegation of retroactivity could not be issued, since this one was merely wounded formally, given the nature of the crime and the gravity of it, the allegation of nullun crimen, nulla poena sine lege becomes invalid, since this could be arranged in a murder trial.
Ended the international part, let’s focus on the internal process. The crimes of murder should have been charged as mixed factual situations, because they were committed by a national of the third Reich, in the territory of other states, therefore the elements of connection for the establishment of the ordainment to be utilized were trespassed. This is due to the fact that although the Private International Law is a ramification of the National Law the criminal part is regulated by universal connection elements, which date the “creation” of the Private International Law.
The legislation rules that criminal crimes point that the local were the crime was perpetrated, locus regit delicti, are the ones that have the ordainment that could be applied in a trial, not the law of the Israel State. The court to establish its competence affirms that the crimes perpetrated by the defendant were done against its nationals, albeit that Ben-Gurion stated that Eichmann would be judged by every crime that the he committed. This could be noticed as the trial continued, as the court wasn’t making any preferences to ethnic crimes, although it should be said that this could be saw as impartiality, on the other hand the matter of the trespassing the rule of locus regit delicti, just lost the justification.
There is also another matter of relevance that the trials didn’t degenerate as case of the Israel State against the Nazi State and its long list of crimes. It is perceivable in the delimitation made by the court that it could not “allow itself to be attracted to territories outside its sphere”.
The defense followed a more traditional approach pleading not guilty, and his lawyer stated in an interview that Eichmann considered himself guilty before the Lord, but not before the law.
The international press classified the judgment as partial, an effort to show the Jew tragedy above all the others terrible facts that happened during the Third Reich, like the extermination of gypsies, blacks, homosexuals, and others.
We must not forget that the court was in delicate position, albeit several legal impediments for the trial to happen, we must not neglect that the Jew question was left out of the Nuremberg trials, the lack of action from the Adenauer Germany in the search for war criminals to which some of those didn’t bother in hiding their identities; and what Hannah Arendt called justice, was applied in the trial.
The Trial
The Trial had a rough start, bombarded by the media which alleged partiality from the court, attaining to the facts that the judges were Jews and the violations done to create the trial.
The accusation dominated the trial from the beginning to the end, the flimsy participation of the defense, badly orchestrated by Dr. Servatius, counted with an auxiliary most of the times, the defendant. The lawyer constantly complained about the salary paid by the State and with contributions done by the Eichmann family in Germany. This lawyer was no novice, since he was active during the Nuremberg trials, in which he also performed as the defense attorney.
The accusation was not entirely without fault and sensationalism, this was in general conducted by a envoy of Ben-Gurion, this can be said by the fact that it diverged several times from the main focus to try to frame Eichmann for the murder of a young boy in Hungary. This was a wise strategy since only the crimes of first rate murder don’t prescribe with a 20 year span. This was emphatically denied by Eichmann: “I had nothing to do with the murder of the Jews. I never killed a Jew, a non Jew – I never killed a human being. I never gave the order to kill a Jew or a non Jew; I simply never did it.”
One of the most disturbing periods of the trial was during the sessions that were destined to the witness from accusation. During those sessions the intent for forging a nationality feeling was clear, this was done by the show of the suffering of the survivors, and since the court and the jury itself was made of middle age to elderly people, most of them survivors. In those days of pain the court at least tried to maintain some course, since, in general, the testimonials were not related to the case, but to the show itself. No testimonial had offered some substantial proof; almost all could be framed in the hearsay rule. The accusation attorney had little to no effort to make the show continue, the judge, Landau, adopted measures to stop this trend which at the end achieved their goals.
Eichmann could be an image of what was the Nazi Germany, a process of continuous changes of varied intensity, which had started from pro Zionist to the final solution. The defendant gained a great deal of knowledge during his starting period in the police until the implementation of the final solution. The Germany at the starting period had a position of disaggregation, and the support to the Zionism, the expels, according Eichmann, was a process of mutual interest, the Jews didn’t wish to stay in Germany and the Germans didn’t want the Jews to stay, therefore saving a lot of Jews by sending them to Palestine. However this defense point was lost amidst the defendant bad memory, as well as the lack of capacity to ordain the most important events.
Eichmann based his allegations of a mutual benefit deportation in the resolution of the Conference of Wannsee, since there was a stipulation that Madagascar would be used as territory for the Jew nation. However this is a debatable excuse since, the concentration of the Jews in ghettos is what allowed the final solution to be as efficient as it was.
The plans for a judenrein Germany were clear from the start. Hitler started his concentration/extermination camps since 1937; the argument was the same as the ones that were built during the war, to purify the world. The targets were people with psychological problems as well as some form of dementia. This only stopped because of the “clamor” from the people to stop the extermination.
The most important fact for now is that Eichmann when first confronted by what would be the final solution, he was astonished, when he discovered the content of one of his trains he diverged all of the rest to a force labor camp, instead of a extermination camp. The question that arises here is one that alone is disturbing. Since he knew of the destiny, why didn´t he took a decision like the officers that were in Sweden or Denmark? Those SS officers stopped to send Jews for extermination, or any kind of camp, and thus it became a haven for any persecuted Jew that was lucky enough to get there. He always strived for the easiest and fastest options; one that didn´t let him take responsibility for his actions. The banality of evil.
What would take a person to forget everything he was thought in all his life, all the values? The banality of evil might be the answer. Eichmann was shielded from the repercussions of his actions by the feeble feeling that he had of himself going against the machine that was Nazi Germany, the feeble feeling that he was just a man against that enormous bureaucracy. This is not an excuse, when we give ourselves the right to be accountable by our actions even if we are doing it in the name of company, a county, a country, we are being less than human, we are the image of gear in a large motor.
There was an experiment that was done in 60´s, it was done to see this kind of response from civil people. There was a group of college students that were divided in two groups, one would be the janitors and the others would be the prisoners, the experiment had to be interrupted, since the janitors were almost on the verge of killing a prisoner. There was another experiment were there would be an actor tied to a chair and he would pretend that he was electrocuted by a machine that would be operated by the experiment group. Those people were instructed that when the actor made a incorrect answer he would be electrocuted by them, and also they were instructed the voltage that would be fatal. The majority of the group killed the actor.
[ARTICLE] Eichmann in Jerusalem, the banality of evil
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Originally Posted by MathiasOfAthens
